Falling Apart
by Gwaeros
Summary: Because Sirius Black understands. Marlene/Sirius. Please read & review. Now complete.
1. Falling

**A/N: Marlene & Sirius – a two shot. This is my first time writing this pairing.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing.**

_She hears the whispers when they walk into the meetings together, hears them mutter that a guy like him doesn't deserve a wonderful girl like her. She hears them say that he's just toying with her emotions, that he'll abandon her soon, just another conquest to add to his record. She hears them say she should leave him. But Marlene McKinnon knows better than that, because Sirius Black understands._

They sit together in the corner of the kitchen, Lupin's place tonight (_the full moon isn't for another week_), and as the meeting goes on around them they crack lewd jokes, laughing too hard amongst a sea of solemn faces and badly disguised tears. Another friend is dead – a muggleborn Gryffindor a few years below them, and though they don't show it, they are hurting behind their smiles, hurting yet laughing because if they didn't they would fall apart and in this war, falling is admitting defeat. And so they laugh, and when Gideon Prewett tells them to shut up and be serious, they crack that stupid name joke, and with a bark-like laugh that never quite rings true no matter how hard he tries, Sirius apparates with her to the outskirts of a town where a pair of death-eaters have been spotted.

It is an ambush, they find out when they finally make it back to headquarters, bearing scars like heroes with no trace of fear in their eyes, instead full to the brim with reckless courage and hidden sorrow for the family they were once again too late to save. Though the fight is over, they are still shaking with adrenaline, but neither of them mention that, lying panting in the rain in the moments after the battle, they shook instead with pure terror as the raindrops wiped the tears from their faces and each pretended they didn't see the other cry. It is an unspoken agreement, formed in the first moments of their friendship; neither will admit that with each death they too die a little inside, but they both know it is true, and they wonder how long they can hold on like this before one of them cracks.

Because they aren't just Sirius and Marlene, the unbreakables, they are people too, but nobody realises the truth, nobody realises that they've been broken all along. Of course, James and Lily suspect something, but Sirius has been broken since the summer of fifth year and he's gotten good at hiding it, even if his laugh is always a touch too loud and his smile a shade too hard to be called happy. And there is nothing that anyone can do about it, not even best friends like James, not even Marlene. But that's alright, because no one can fix her either, and he knows it.

They give their report in a hurry – she's dying for a smoke, and to the surprise of the Order, he joins her, rolling it between his teeth and taking a long drag that nearly makes him choke. Lily gives him 'the look', the one that means she's worried about him, but he escapes with a grin and an offhand "I'm fine," (_always "I'm fine,"_) before they step together into the night, bickering light-heartedly.

Later, lying side by side on her bed in a tangle of sheets and empty bottles, they can pretend that they are normal, that there isn't the chance that they will die tomorrow (_he doesn't believe he could die tomorrow but the chance is there all the same_), and for a few hours they can feel complete. Because they aren't like James and Lily, who even in the midst of war are madly in love. No, they are cigarettes and bruises and too much whiskey, and they are definitely not in love.

_Because in spite of everything, Sirius Black understands._

**A/N: Please review, otherwise I don't know if there's anything I'm doing wrong.**


	2. Apart

**A/N: Marlene & Sirius – Part 2.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing.**

_He hears the whispers when he walks into the meeting alone, hears them mutter that a guy like him didn't deserve a wonderful girl like her. He hears them say that he toyed with her emotions, dragging her down with him. He hears them say she should have left him. And though he agrees with the former and can't help but be angry at the second, it is the third that makes him laugh. Because she did leave him, just not in the way they mean. And he fell apart._

When Marlene dies he breaks down, really breaks down, sobbing till he chokes in a way he hasn't since Regulus was killed, and they find him hours later curled up in his apartment with a bottle of firewhisky, finally grieving for all who have died. He can't keep up his facade of humour and jokes any longer, not without her there to drown his sorrows, and everything he has pushed to the back of his mind erupts, sending him reeling. For a while he thinks he lingers on the edges of insanity, and through the haze in his eyes he thinks he sees her, but there is no one there because he kicked them all out when they came round to talk to him, even James and Remus and bumbling little Peter.

He doesn't leave the apartment for a week after that, and when he does he is a changed man. Without her, the meetings are quiet, and he sits alone in _their_ corner, and where once he was fire and lightning and storm he is thin ice and jagged edges and poison. Only in battle and anger (and he is angry often) does the flame ever ignite, and he goads his enemies mercilessly, calling them with reckless abandon all the names he used to reserve for only _Snivellus_. Several times it is nearly his downfall when he is too busy laughing to see the curse that hits him, but they patch him up well at headquarters, and slowly, slowly they come to see the real Sirius, the broken Sirius, and now when he laughs too hard in an attempt to choke back his emotions, they look at him in pity not annoyance, and it makes him mad.

And so piece by piece he builds back his walls, and when the next death comes and he feels like crying, he finds a new way to cope, driving his motorbike through the night until the wind has dried his tears and left him too numb to feel the pain. But still he misses Marlene (not _his_ Marlene, because she was never _his_), and when everyone asks him if he was in love with her, he lies and says "Yes", because if he didn't, nobody would understand that in each other they had found passion, and desperation, and even friendship, but they were never in love. Because to Sirius, love implies tenderness and affection and commitment and everything they never had; they had violence and anger and tears, an escape from the realities of the world, and they burned too hot and too fierce to last forever.

Seemingly a lifetime later, sitting with Remus at the table in the kitchen of 12 Grimmauld Place, he tries to explain what it was they shared back then, tries to explain how he could never love her, but there are some things that even Remus can't understand, because the werewolf is in love with Nymphadora in a way that Sirius has never loved. And he is glad for them, because it means he can believe that there is still hope for his friend, he can believe that Remus isn't quite as broken as _they_ once were, because nobody deserves to fall apart.

_And this, more than anything, Sirius Black understands._

**The End. Thank you for reading & please review =D**


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